Date of sighting: 03-25-2006 Location of sighting: 705 miles of the coast of Miami Fla., and 600 miles from the Bahamas’ Islands, aboard a cruise ship headed for New York.

Discription of sighting: While aboard a cruise ship, the ship was stopped due to a man overboard alert at approximately 1:00am. The engines were all stopped and my daughter and I were on the 5th floor, out on the balcony of our room.

We were looking out to sea for any sighs of coastguard help that may be on the way for rescue. This was approximately 2 and ½ hours after the engines had stopped. The waters were calm with little wind.

Looking out on the horizon there was a very small amber colored light that seemed stationary. I pointed this light out to my daughter, and commented that this may be a boat or some vehicle to assist with the search and rescue.

As we were watching this light it changed from an amber dot of light to a white tower shaped light. At the same time it started to move rapidly towards the ship. Within a minute it traveled from the horizon to 100-300 feet from the side of the ship and stopped. The was no noise emanating from the light source. The water however was churning and upset. The engines of the ship were still at all stop.

The light remained aside the ship, still and hovering for about 40 seconds, then was gone from our view.

We remained in this area for 14 hours. There was an coastguard airplane that flew by several times circling the boat, from far off. This airplane was nothing like what I saw earlier.

When morning came I went up on deck and spoke with some other passengers, and they were talking about the man who had jumped overboard, and I found no-one who mentioned this strange occurrence.

I would like to know if there were others that saw what my daughter and I saw.

What was the date of the sighting, please? You indicate both May 25, and March 25 (in the body of the report).

Did you ask any of the other passengers whether they had seen the light? If so, what did they say, please? Also, did you ask any of the crew members whether the event had been noted by them, and perhaps entered into the ship's log?

Thanks, again, for sharing the information with our Center!

Cordially,

Peter Davenport, DirectorNational UFO Reporting CenterSeattle, WA

((RESPONSE FROM WITNESS))

Hi,

The date of the sighting was May 25, 2006. I did not ask any crew if this had been logged since the event centered around the tragedy of a man jumping overboard. We were off the ship soon afterward. A special note: Since we were legally bound to stay in the vicinity of where the man jumped, we were going to be 14 or so hours late arriving in New York. We were able to make brief phone call to home, but this was monitored, and no details of why we were going to be late were to be given over the phone at that time. Funny?